Evil Dead: The Series 21: "Is This A Dagger..."
by OmarSnake
Summary: The Kandarian Dagger Returns...


"Evil Dead: The Series" Episode 21  
  
"Is This A Dagger I See Before Me?"  
  
By: OmarSnake  
  
Rated R for Horrific Elements  
  
  
  
ONE MINUTE AGO....  
  
Earl Rogers looked up from the mud-soaked ground. He didn't have a mirror, but he knew instinctively that he was a horrible sight. His hands were mottled and grey, his skin cracked and blistered, the stench of decay coming from open wounds. Though he could not see it, his face... in fact, every part of his body... was in the same sad condition.  
  
He had seen a horror movie once, in which the dead came back to life. One of them was captured by the heroes and, when asked what being dead felt like, cried that it hurt, and the only way to appease the pain was to eat human brains. At the time, watching the video with his pal Del, Earl had laughed at the absurdity of the scene. Now, though, Earl knew what the ghoul had meant about the pain. Was he dead? He didn't feel dead. He just wished he was.  
  
He leaned back, his head tilted to one side, and stared as the men approached through the hazy forest, their flashlights darting around. The rain had dissipated to a mere mist, and the sun was setting, the sky above the canopy of trees turning darker still than it had been hours earlier.  
  
Something inside Earl's mind told him to stay vulnerable, just let the men kill him. But something else inside him disagreed, violently. Not a self- preservation instinct, exactly. After all, these thoughts seemed less concerned with survival and more with not letting those bastards win. And certainly the thoughts were obsessed with not letting the strange men get their hands on the dagger.  
  
Earl gritted his teeth, getting to his feet with great pain. He may have broken his leg when he tripped over that exposed root.  
  
A light shone on him, and he flinched instinctively.  
  
"There he is!" one of the men cried.  
  
Soon, five of them were approaching, each with a flashlight in one hand and a pistol in the other.  
  
"Hold it right there, fellah," one of the men, stocky and clad in a trenchcoat and hat -- Newton Fisk -- said. "We don't want to hurt you, we just want the dagger."  
  
"No... you don't...." Earl said ominously, his voice unnaturally hoarse.  
  
"It's not like it'll do you any good," said another of the men, younger with wavy dark hair... Tyler Wilcox.  
  
"It won't do anyone any good... ever..." Earl said, looking down at his waist.  
  
He pulled the dagger from where he had tucked it under his belt, and held it up. It was a fearsome-looking thing, nearly two feet long -- closer to a shortsword than to a dagger, actually --- composed of serrated edges and carved bone with ornamental skulls carved into the hilt.  
  
"Good just isn't in its nature," Earl continued as he cradled the dagger in his hands.  
  
"We might be able to cure you," Tyler Wilcox said helpfully.  
  
Earl looked up.  
  
"Seriously," Tyler said, stepping forward cautiously. "We deal with the supernatural all the time."  
  
"You can't... fix this..." Earl said, looking at his rotting hands.  
  
"We can try," Wilcox said. "We've got scientists, occultists, physicians, you name it..." He pocketed his flashlight, and extended a gloved hand. "Just give me the Kandarian Dagger."  
  
Earl looked at the dagger, and at Wilcox's hand. The thing in the back of his mind told him to stab the man with the weapon, to watch the blood pour from his body and stain the leaf-strewn forest floor.  
  
Earl had gotten sick of that thing at the back of his mind.  
  
He stumbled forward, and lay the dagger safely into Wilcox's hand.  
  
Wilcox smiled as he looked down at the ancient weapon. Then he raised the pistol in his other hand, blowing Earl's brains out. The sound of the single shot echoed through the dark forest.  
  
Earl fell back, unable to make a final noise. If he had, it would have been a chuckle of relief. In the second before his body hit the ground, with what passed for rational thought in what remained of his mind, he realized that he was actually going to die, that the thing at the back of his mind could not do anything to stop it.  
  
"You're a real prick, you know that?" Fisk asked as he came up beside Wilcox.  
  
"I'm a prick who gets the job done," Wilcox replied, holding up the dagger and examining it closely. "The boss is gonna be REAL happy to see this thing."  
  
Fisk looked down at the body of Earl Rogers.  
  
"Yeah," Fisk said somberly. "We sure are lucky."  
  
TWO HOURS AGO....  
  
Melanie Chatham almost decided to ignore the phone when it rang.  
  
She was an attractive woman, just past her 35th birthday, with red curly hair she had cut short two months earlier, as an act of defiance and self- renewal following a messy breakup. It had seemed like a smart idea at the time, but the result was so severe and so short she had felt foolish; it had just recently grown back to a length she was starting to like.  
  
When the phone began to ring, she had been trying to reshelve books at the Cherry Ridge Public Library, while keeping an eye on those young punks Ernie and Fred, two juvenile delinquents she suspected of tearing pages out of books just for mischief. She didn't want to be distracted from keeping an eye on them, but somehow she felt she had better answer the phone.  
  
So she did.  
  
"Cherry Ridge Public Libr--" she started.  
  
"Melanie, it's me," came a voice on the other end.  
  
It was raspy, but familiar.  
  
"Earl?" she asked, not entirely pleased. After all, he was the man she had broken up with, because he had changed from the silent but cheerful guy she fell in love with to a brooding, somber man she barely recognized. Within days of their breakup he had begun dating that slut Lizabeth Walgrew who worked down at the Circle K, which had infuriated Melanie and led to her too-extreme haircut... and to sleeping with Billy Nightfire, something she didn't regret as much but still didn't feel too good about, considering that he was a married man.  
  
"I need your help," Earl said.  
  
Melanie's first instinct was to tell him to fuck off. But something was wrong with his voice.  
  
"You sick?" she asked.  
  
He coughed, or laughed, or both. "You don't know the half of it," he said.  
  
"What's wrong?" she asked, her maternal instinct kicking in. "What're your symptoms?"  
  
"I need you to look up something on the Internet," Earl said. "You've got a computer there, right?"  
  
"Of course," Melanie said. "But listen, sug, you sound sick..."  
  
"Just trust me," Earl interrupted.  
  
Melanie shifted the phone from one ear to the other and reached for the computer mouse. "Just give me a second to log on," she said. "Okay, done. Now what?"  
  
"Go to one of those places where you find things on the Internet," Earl said.  
  
"A search engine," Melanie said.  
  
"Whatever you call it," Earl replied.  
  
Melanie went to Favorite Places on her screen and selected Hotbot. "Okay, done. What do you want me to find?"  
  
Joshua Chang was lost in thought, typing away as he worked the bugs out of a new translation program, when an alert window opened up on his monitor screen.  
  
It startled him, not because it was particularly loud but simply because it was so unexpected. He grabbed his phone and dialed 411.  
  
Before it finished ringing once, the phone on the other end picked up.  
  
"Yes?" came the austere voice of Oracle.  
  
"This is Josh," Chang said. "You remember that program I created last year, to monitor the major search engines on the Internet?"  
  
"Someone entered the words," Oracle said matter-of-factly.  
  
"Could be a coincidence, of course, but---" Chang started.  
  
"Doubtful," Oracle said. "Extremely doubtful. I'm in the gym on level B2 with Gretchen right at the moment, but I'll be right up."  
  
"Sure thing," Chang said, saving the changes he had made in the translation program before shutting it down and turning his attention to the alert.  
  
Hotbot. They had used the hotbot.com search engine. Two words: "Kandarian dagger".  
  
Chang typed away, trying to track the ISP that had been used. By the time Oracle strode into the room, he had his answer, and it wasn't one that was going to make Mr. Szabo happy.  
  
"Cherry Ridge, Tennessee," he said.  
  
Oracle was unsurprised. She was always unsurprised. It got on Chang's nerves sometimes. But in this case, the situation was too important.  
  
"Public library there, to be specific," Chang continued.  
  
"This is no coincidence," Oracle said. "Cherry Ridge is the town nearest where the dagger was lost."  
  
Chang's eyebrows raised. He had been given sparse details on what they were looking for; he didn't even know what the dagger was, or if it was a codephrase for something else, in fact.  
  
"I have to let Mr. Szabo know about this," Oracle said. "Keep monitoring it. See if they go to any web sites of interest."  
  
"The only hit they got with that phrase was the dummy site I set up to alert us if anyone searched for it," Chang replied. "And that one gives them a 'Whoops! We can't find your page!' notification..."  
  
"They may try to search for just the word 'Kandarian' then," Oracle said.  
  
"In which case they'll hit a few resumes of people with that last name," Chang said. "But I'll monitor their searches from here, see if I can figure out any more details."  
  
"Good man," Oracle said, departing.  
  
"I've tried five search engines, and all I get is that one page that won't come up anymore," Melanie said. "Probably something that was inactive, so Geocities deleted it. They do that, if you have a web site that no one visits."  
  
"Damn it," Earl replied. "Okay, thanks."  
  
"You sound awful," Melanie said. "If you're sick, I can pick up some medicine..."  
  
"No thanks," Earl said. "Medicine won't do me any good."  
  
"What's that mean?" Melanie asked anxiously.  
  
"I'm sorry," Earl said.  
  
"For what?" Melanie asked, caught off-guard.  
  
"For what I've become," Earl said, then hung up the phone.  
  
Melanie stared at the receiver, not sure what to make of the conversation.  
  
Then, she heard a page tearing, and looked up angrily as Fred and Ernie giggled from behind a shelf.  
  
Earl hung up the receiver and looked in the mirror.  
  
His features had seemed normal half a week ago -- tanned skin, blond, short- cropped hair, thick neck -- but in the time since he had cut himself, something had changed. He felt rotten inside, and looked it on the outside. His face had gone pale, then seemed to lose its color altogether. And this morning, he had woken up to find it mottled and grey. He felt sick, sicker than he had ever felt in his entire life. And when he had tried to wash his face, he had somehow torn the skin on his cheek... it was as if he was slowly rotting away. As if to emphasize that point, one of his teeth fell out when he pressed a finger inside his mouth. He was falling apart...and it was getting worse, fast.  
  
But he knew no doctor could help him. The voice at the back of his mind was certain of that.  
  
This must be what happened to Del, he thought.  
  
They had thought when they found Del's body that he had been dead a week, due to the decomposition. But maybe this had happened to him too.  
  
Earl couldn't imagine taking the way out Del had used... his grandmother had raised him to believe suicides went to Hell.  
  
And, considering what the voice of the back of his mind had told him Hell was like, Earl couldn't risk ending up there.  
  
"Excellent," Lajos Szabo said coldly, from the darkness that seemed to envelope him in his office.  
  
Oracle stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the light from the hallway outside. "I thought you would be happy."  
  
"I'll be happy when Dr. Thoreau has found that accursed sheath," Szabo replied. "Without it, the dagger cannot be wielded safely."  
  
"We don't know for sure that someone there has actually found the dagger," Oracle said.  
  
She could feel Szabo's icy stare.  
  
"Surely you, of all people, can tell me that," Szabo said after a long silence.  
  
Oracle nodded. "I do believe it has been found... or that someone there had it for a long time."  
  
"It's a cursed object," Szabo said. "If someone had it, it would have driven them insane by now."  
  
Oracle nodded again. "Shall I call for someone to investigate?"  
  
She heard footsteps running down the hall behind her, and turned her head. It was Joshua Chang, winded from his run down several flights of stairs. "I found it!" he said, waving a printout.  
  
He looked in at the darkness. "Hello, Mr. Szabo," he said apologetically.  
  
"Mr. Chang," Szabo replied. "What have you found?"  
  
"The phone line at the library... the voice line, as opposed to the modem line... was connected to a private residence. I assume that whoever lives there had called to have a librarian look up the Kandarian Dagger on the web."  
  
"Possible," Szabo said.  
  
"I traced the call and got the address," Chang said, holding up the piece of paper.  
  
"Excellent work," Szabo said.  
  
"However, it is possible that the phone connection was a coincidence, and that it was someone in the library at the time doing the search," Oracle said.  
  
Szabo strummed his fingertips on his desktop.  
  
"Send Mr. Fisk and Mr. Wilcox to investigate, with a few others for backup," Szabo said to Oracle. "Get them on a plane as soon as possible. Have them check the residence first, and if doesn't pan out, interrogate anyone they can find at the library. Tell Mr. Fisk to carry his credentials this time, in case he has to pretend to be from the FBI again... and remind them to wear gloves if they touch the dagger."  
  
"Yes, sir," Oracle replied, then turned and headed off.  
  
Chang started to head back upstairs.  
  
"And, Mr. Chang?" Szabo called out from the dark office.  
  
Chang turned back. "Yes, sir?"  
  
"Five thousand dollar bonus, for all your hard work today," Szabo said.  
  
Chang smiled broadly. "Thank you, sir!"  
  
"And one suggestion," Szabo said.  
  
"Yes, sir?"  
  
"Spend a little of the money on your wardrobe," Szabo said. "The 'Charlie's Angels' T-shirt is a bit tacky to wear to work, don't you think?"  
  
Chang didn't dare disagree.  
  
THREE DAYS AGO...  
  
Earl had stopped sleeping. It was the only way to prevent the dreams.  
  
He still couldn't remember any details, but he knew they were bad. Awful, in fact.  
  
And the voice at the back of his mind, it was growing louder every day... figuratively speaking. It didn't speak words to him, it just felt like a different line of thought. Like he had lost control of a section of his brain, and it had developed a will of its own.  
  
It wanted him to wield the dagger.  
  
It wanted him to go out and kill people with the dagger. Blood sacrifices. For the Kandarian Dagger.  
  
In a fit of rage, Earl tried to destroy the dagger. He took a hammer to it, trying to smash at it. He wasn't entirely sure what it was made of; Watley had told him it looked like it was carved out of bone, most likely from a cow or horse. Something big.  
  
When Earl swung the hammer, the dagger shattered into a thousand pieces.  
  
And Earl, still in his sleep-deprived stupor, laughed triumphantly. He started to clean the pieces up when he cut his finger on one.  
  
He cried out from the pain, and sucked on the wound.  
  
And when he looked down, his eyes widened in horror. The dagger was, once more, intact. Not so much as a scratch on it.  
  
Now you've done it, the back of his mind seemed to tell him. It's tasted your blood. It's infected you.  
  
FOUR WEEKS AGO....  
  
Earl sat up in bed, sweating profusely. The first rays of dawn's light streamed into his bedroom.  
  
He glanced over. Lizabeth was nowhere to be seen. Her clothes were gone, even the blouse he had playfully torn open when they got back from their night at the bar. She must have dressed and left sometime in the middle of the night.  
  
Judging the way the sheets were tangled, she had probably decided to leave because of him thrashing around in his sleep. He knew the sheets didn't get that way from their brief, furtive, inebriated lovemaking the night before.  
  
It had been a problem that had increased lately, as Earl's dreams -- which he never seemed to remember -- grew more troubled. Lizabeth had complained before about him flailing his arms, screaming, thrashing about. Before he had begun dating Liz last month, his last girlfriend Melanie had said the same thing, and she said that he should see a psychiatrist..  
  
He didn't know why he had the nightmares, or why they were seemed to be growing in frequency and intensity.  
  
The dagger.  
  
Earl started to look around, to see who had said that. But no one else was in the room, and he had heard no noise apart from a few birds chirping outside his window.  
  
Earl got up from his bed, pulling on his boxer shorts before he stumbled out of the bedroom and down the hall.  
  
He threw open a closet, turned on a light and reached up to grab a box on a high shelf.  
  
The top of the box was marked 'Del's' in magic marker.  
  
Earl had taken the box along with other possessions of Del's; the other things he had mailed to Del's mother in Florida, but he knew she wouldn't want this. Earl opened the box and looked down.  
  
Inside was the grotesque Kandarian dagger.  
  
Earl reached into the box and gripped the dagger, holding it up and examining it. Even in the light, it was creepy as Hell.  
  
And it was important as Hell. Emphasis on 'Hell'.  
  
Earl didn't know why that thought had popped into his mind. And he didn't know what it meant.  
  
FIVE MONTHS AGO....  
  
The death of Del Higgins came as a shock to the folks of Cherry Ridge, especially Earl Rogers.  
  
Years back, Earl and Del had been good buddies. But over time, they had drifted apart, as Del -- once an outspoken and vivacious if occasionally dim-witted fellow -- became sullen and withdrawn. Earl had always been the quiet, thoughtful one of the two, and he didn't know what to make of his friend's change in behavior. He had made a few attempts to talk with Del, to make sure he hadn't gotten hooked on drugs or something, but there were no easy answers to be found, and Earl soon gave up on the effort. It was easier to do nothing, to let Del distance himself from everyone in Cherry Ridge.  
  
Still, suicide seemed an impossibility.  
  
When Earl got the call from Deputy Watley, he had thought it was a joke.  
  
"Better come down to Del's place, Earl," Watley had said. "He shot himself."  
  
Earl, sitting on the edge of his bed, rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "Not funny, Joe," he said groggily, still feeling the aftereffects of the whiskey from the night before.  
  
"Ain't supposed to be funny," Watley replied impatiently. "I'm serious. Dead serious."  
  
Earl pulled his ear from the phone, and sat there for a moment, trying to absorb the information.  
  
"Sug, what's wrong?" came a voice from under his bedsheets.  
  
Earl looked over to Melanie Chatham, who leaned up on one shoulder. She, too, was groggy, her curly red hair hanging down over her eyes.  
  
Earl started to speak, then cleared his throat. "Del... Del Higgins killed himself," he said hoarsely.  
  
Melanie gasped.  
  
"Earl?" Watley's voice called from the phone, and Earl put it back to his ear.  
  
"Yeah?" Earl asked.  
  
"I have to call Mrs. Higgins," Watley said. "Any idea where she's living now?"  
  
"Fort Lauderdale, last I heard," Earl said. "He's probably got the number written down somewhere. You looked in his trailer?"  
  
Watley chuckled harshly. "In this mess, it's hard to tell."  
  
"Mess?" Earl asked. "Del's place is usually empty."  
  
"When's the last time you were here?" Watley asked.  
  
"About three weeks ago, when I dropped him off at his place," Earl answered. "But it's been more'n a year since I've been in there, I guess."  
  
Earl dressed quickly and gave Melanie a kiss goodbye, then headed over to Del's mobile home to see if he could help. He knew Del's mother years ago, and figured that if anyone told her about her son's death, he should be the one to have to do it, rather than some deputy who didn't know either of them that well.  
  
On the drive, Earl tried to think through the reasons. Why would Del kill himself?  
  
Sure, he didn't have a job, and the prospects of his love life were none too bright. But that was nothing new. Del had always laughed off his troubles, before he stopped laughing in the past few years.  
  
The last time Earl had seen Del, he was standing at the side of the road out near the ravine, staring at that estate built on the outskirts of the county five years back.  
  
It was the vacation home of New York industrialist Lajos Szabo, though no one in town could ever remember the Szabo fellow being there. He had the stones moved from Europe, from whatever country he was from originally. It was an imposing, dark mansion on the hilltop, practically a castle, complete with gargoyles and towers and enormous fences, but the main building had precious few windows. It looked comically out of place here in the hills of Tennessee, in a valley where the nearest large town had all of 3000 people living in it.  
  
Earl had gone out in search of his runaway dog, a black lab named Vickie, with no luck. When he drove down the rarely-travelled road that led up to the mansion, he had seen a figure standing in the darkness. He had recognized it as Del, and stopped to ask what he was doing. Del had not replied. He had not said anything, just stared at the castle.  
  
Earl assumed Del had been drinking, and coaxed him into the truck and drove him home, in silence. Neither spoke the entire time.  
  
That was three weeks earlier. Now, Del was dead.  
  
And, like Watley had said, his place was a mess. There was trash everywhere.  
  
It wasn't like Del. As long as Earl had known him, he'd been a neat freak. Partly it was because he didn't like germs, and partly because he threw everything away. He could always be counted on to ask to borrow some tool, or even ask for the loan of a clean shirt. But now, there was.... Earl's brow wrinkled as he held up a piece of crumpled paper. It was a photocopy, of some ancient text not even written in English. And other papers, as Earl picked them up to examine them, were the same way. Copies of books, in Italian, in German, in languages Earl didn't even recognize. On the edges of the pages were scribbled translations, word for word, with question marks replacing words that he had apparently not been able to translate.  
  
On one page, Del's notes, translating from some language Earl thought might be Russian, began:  
  
"In shadow it(plural) whispering  
  
And (to watch) human collective  
  
And (to plan, scheme, conceive) against all"  
  
Whatever Del had been reading, it wasn't pleasant. Earl dropped the paper, taking mental note of a stack of library books piled in a corner: German- English Dictionary, French-English Dictionary, Italian... a whole pile of them.  
  
Earl would have to ask Melanie about them.  
  
"He's back here," Watley said, motioning. Earl followed him to the back of the mobile home, where the bedroom was. A blood-stained bedsheet covered a figure laying across the bed. A revolver sat on the floor, fallen from the mottled grey, limp hand that dangled out from under the sheet.  
  
Earl felt a wave of nausea.  
  
"From the looks of the body, I'd say he's been here at least a week," Watley said.  
  
Earl turned and pushed his way through the back door of the trailer, retching violently on the ground outside.  
  
Watley poked his head out from the trailer. "You okay?"  
  
"Been better," Earl replied. He wiped his mouth and looked up, at the rusted-out barrel where Del burned old newspapers and mail. It was still smouldering.  
  
"Hey, Joe," Earl said. "If he's been dead that long, who started a fire?"  
  
Watley looked at the barrel curiously. "I didn't notice that before."  
  
Earl peered down at the contents of the barrel. A few embers still glowed, but most of the heat had dissipated already.  
  
Watley stood beside him as the two men looked down.  
  
"Say, what's that?" Watley asked, picking up a twig and poking at some newspaper ash. It fell aside, revealing the Kandarian dagger.  
  
"What the hell?" Watley asked emphatically.  
  
"It's an old knife Del and I found years ago, out in the woods," Earl replied.  
  
"Found? That thing??" Watley asked.  
  
Earl nodded. "We were out hunting, and found it under some leaves."  
  
"Looks satanic," Watley said.  
  
Earl couldn't disagree.  
  
SIX YEARS AGO....  
  
The sign read 'Future Site of Another Fine Home from Gateway Construction'.  
  
Del Higgins' eyes narrowed as he gazed at the sign. In his mind, he was trying to burn a hole in it.  
  
He didn't succeed, of course. Del's mind didn't have that kind of power. In truth, it didn't have much power at all. He had barely gotten through high school, and might have given it up completely if it hadn't been for his nagging mother.  
  
Del was now pushing 30, a week-chinned, lanky man with stringy brown hair, a hawkish nose and eyes some described as 'piercing' and others left at 'beady'. He was striking in a somewhat homely way, and his minimal shaving skills and fondness for worn denim jeans and faded plaid shirts assured that he always had a scruffy drifter look about him.  
  
Sitting beside him, driving the pickup truck, was Earl Rogers. Earl and Del had been buddies since 5th grade, when Earl had pulled a bully off Del in the playground and proceeded to bound the other boy. Earl had never bothered to give a reason for his sudden action, coming to the defense of a boy he barely knew at the time, and Del never asked.  
  
Earl, who had turned 30 last month, was a thick-necked man with short- cropped sandy blond hair, green eyes, and a muscular build. While not particularly handsome, he was good-looking enough to draw the attention of the ladies who frequented their favorite bar, Pearl's. He was also a decent, hard-working man, which was more than could often be said of Del.  
  
"I swear, that gets my goat," Del said as he stared at the Gateway Construction sign. "Out of towner comes in to build a friggin' mansion and he doesn't even hire a local crew to do it!"  
  
Earl shrugged.  
  
"Seriously, Earl, don't it make you mad?" Del persisted.  
  
Earl rolled his eyes, knowing that if he didn't say anything Del would just keep bellyaching. "Not in particular."  
  
"Why the hell not??? Think how much Bob Jenkins' outfit coulda used that contract! They had to lay off half their crew last month..."  
  
"Bob Jenkins don't know shit about moving a castle," Earl said evenly.  
  
Del fumed silently.  
  
It was true... 'Gateway Construction' had come in from out of state to assemble, stone by stone, an estate that was being moved here from Austria. Rumor had it that it was a castle belonging to a reclusive millionaire. It was the biggest news the folks of Cherry Ridge had been exposed to since the killings about two years earlier, and in a grim twist, the castle was being assembled right on the grounds of the cabin where those killings had taken place.  
  
The cabin -- or what remained of it --- had been levelled, but not before two local kids had gotten in trouble up there. One of them ended up dead, the other ended up carted off to a loony bin somewhere. And now, Gateway Construction was clearing wilderness to make way for the assembly of the mansion, or castle, or whatever you'd want to call it.  
  
To Del and Earl, it meant that the land where they'd gone hunting since they were boys was about to be sealed off, and then fenced in as part of some rich European guy's estate.  
  
In honor of their days there, Del had convinced Earl that they should go on one last hunting trip, while the construction crew was waiting for the ground to dry out after a recent gullywasher.  
  
Earl pulled his truck to a stop. "This is a waste of time," he said. "With all the rain lately, won't be no way of following tracks."  
  
"Who knows?" Del asked with a broad grin. "We might get lucky."  
  
END. 


End file.
